Apologetics and Ethnocentrism: Psychology and Religion Within an Ideological Surround

The psychology of religion can be seen as a creation of Enlightenment forms of thought. Within this framework, researchers presumably use an unbiased rationality and a value-free empiricism to develop a progressively more objective psychology of the religious self. Recent critiques of the Enlightenm...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The international journal for the psychology of religion
Main Author: Watson, Paul J. 1948-2019 (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group [1993]
In: The international journal for the psychology of religion
Online Access: Volltext (Resolving-System)
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Summary:The psychology of religion can be seen as a creation of Enlightenment forms of thought. Within this framework, researchers presumably use an unbiased rationality and a value-free empiricism to develop a progressively more objective psychology of the religious self. Recent critiques of the Enlightenment have suggested that all forms of rationality are biased and that all empiricism is theory-laden. Within a post-Enlightenment frame of reference, researchers can offer favorable and thus "apologetic" analyses of the religious self, whereas more unfavorable research programs can be described as "ethnocentric." A sensitivity to such "biases" might be promoted by placing the psychology of religion within an ideological surround (i.e., by understanding that it rests upon somewhat nonempirical, normative, and sociological assumptions). Recent studies have shown how such an approach can demonstrate the potential for empirical research to produce a distorted characterization of the religious self.
ISSN:1532-7582
Reference:Kritik in "Escaping the Secular Enlightenment - But Slouching Toward Yugoslavia (1993)"
Kritik in "Post-Enlightenment and Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) (1993)"
Contains:Enthalten in: The international journal for the psychology of religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1207/s15327582ijpr0301_1